Reflections on the NGO forum on women '95

Abstract

The approximately 30,000 participants in the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Forum on Women ‘95 did more than simply give voice and attention to often invisible and silenced women's issues. They journeyed to the forum from over 185 countries to Huairou, a resort town forty kilometers outside of Beijing, the People's Republic of China, to network, exchange information, and devise innovative and determined implementation of solutions to the world's most pressing problems. The NGO forum inspired commitment to action in many forms: renewing and forging solidarity on issues and strategies, lobbying government delegates during the overlapping (4–15 September 1995) official U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and sustaining and expanding day-to-day work in communities after participants returned home.     

Exclusion of Taiwan activists diminishes impact of the U.N. fourth world conference on women

Abstract

It has been widely reported that six bona fide organizations from Taiwan with expertise in the advancement of women and women's rights were denied accreditation to participate as nongovernmental organization observers to the official U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women that was recently held in Beijing, China. In addition, numerous women from Taiwan and also Tibet were excluded from attending the parallel Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Forum on Women ’95. This forum was specifically mandated to include all women and men from around the world who wanted to discuss the advancement of women. Originally the NGO forum was to be located in close proximity to the official conference in Beijing, but four months prior to the conference China announced that the NGO forum would be moved to a rural location forty kilometers outside of Beijing. The leadership of the NGO forum protested this change, but was assured by China that all applicants who submitted registration forms on time would be accommodated and granted visas.     

Towards a Third World Critique of Tourism: Resources for Global Action and Solidarity

Abstract

Third World tourism continues to expand apace. The tourism industry's promotional materials are replete with images of a “frontier” industry, new vistas of “paradise,” “virgin” beaches, and “untouched” landscapes. Indeed, the imagery is that of exploration, conquest, and domination. For the people of the Third World, whose natural, human, and cultural resources provide the raw material for this industry, this is no imagery, it is reality.     

Philippine “normalization”: The politics of form

Abstract

Third World nations, on the whole, have amply demonstrated that they cannot produce the ambiance for the democratic institutions they inherited from their former imperial rulers. In such poor nations, class cleavages are widening as a result of structurally conservative development policies adopted by the ruling elite s in collusion with the First World. Elite attempts to limit “politics” to the symbolic level, safely played out in institutions largely insulated from any popular sharing in power, have been frequently repudiated. Popular demands for structural change in these countries have induced national elites to dismantle representative institutions and to turn to more coercive methods of control.     

Democracy,African intellectuals and African Renaissance

Abstract

This article argues that democracy is a prerequisite for the African Renaissance. The role of African intellectuals is crucial in making the dream of the African Renaissance come true. This article revisits the discourse on the African Renaissance, its history and content before dealing with the issue of democracy. Democracy is closely related to human rights and development and is a sine qua non for the African Renaissance. The current discourse on the African Renaissance is not new. The first international conference on the African Renaissance was held in Dakar, Senegal, from 26 February to 2 March 1996 where African intellectuals gathered to celebrate the works of Professor Cheikh Anta Diop, ten years after his death. The theme of the conference was ‘African Renaissance in the Third Millennium’. The first African Renaissance Conference in South Africa took place from 28 to 29 September 1998. Thabo Mbeki ‐ then, Deputy Pesident of South Africa ‐ read the keynote address on ‘Giving the Renaissance content: Objectives and definitions’. This article complements efforts at redefining the roles of African intellectuals in fostering democracy through a conscious application of the framework of African Renaissance.     

Appendix

Abstract

An unresolved controversy exists in development literature over the nature and function of the informal sector in urban areas of the Third World. The controversy revolves around the presumed relationship between the modern system of industrial production (often termed the “formal sector”) and that part of the urban economy operating outside it (the “informal sector”). The earlier view that the informal sector is a source of employment which can be realized if the linkages between the two sectors are improved through policies designed to regularize the informal sector, has been shown to be non-generalizable and even inaccurate. Increasingly, researchers have come to the conclusion that the modern industrial sector in the Third World is parasitic and detrimental to the development of the remainder of the urban economy. Their research implicitly or explicitly points out that a net transfer of value from the informal sector to the formal sector is occurring. The transfer is in the form of undervalued labor drawn from the informal sector, undervalued goods and services produced in the informal sector which are directly or indirectly consumed in the formal sector, and a transfer of the welfare burden to the informal sector. In the process, that segment of the population in a Third World city that earns a living primarily in the informal sector is moving toward a situation of increasing immiseration.     

Cooking the Goose: Fiji's Coup Culture Contextualised

Abstract

In the 40 years since Fiji became independent, there has been no shortage of perspectives from which to frame its development: its colonial past, its dual status as a Third World and Pacific island state, and, most pervasively perhaps, race conflict. This article focuses on another perspective: the failure of ethnic Fijian leaders to democratise their community politically and economically. Its consequences for the country have been long-standing and lie behind Fiji's developing coup culture     

Global reporting from the Third World: the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association, 1963–1974

ABSTRACT

Originating from the 1955 Bandung Conference, the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association (AAJA) promoted international collaboration among journalists in newly independent countries. Built on an inclusive foundation of peaceful co-existence, the AAJA contributed to the development of expansive global information networks, lively intellectual traffic, and rich visual arts among Afro-Asian nations. However, the cosmopolitanism of its early years was later undermined by the decline of constitutional democracy in Indonesia and a lack of cohesion among Afro-Asian nations. After the September Thirtieth Movement in Indonesia in 1965, the AAJA relocated to Beijing and was mobilized by the Chinese state to promote the P.R.C. as the leader of an embittered Third World’s battle against American imperialism and Soviet revisionism. In the early 1970s, ideological fervor began abating in China. During this time, Mao’s reframing of the three worlds, which was based on developmental measurements, redirected the AAJA’s Third World discourse to issues of modernization until its quiet dissolution in 1974. The history of the AAJA demonstrates the complex and often conflicted ways in which two important post-colonial states – Indonesia and China – conceptualized “the Third World” and formulated media representations during the Cold War.     

The international conference on democratic decentralization

Abstract

From 23 to 28 May 2000, 2,762 academics, officials, and activists participated in the International Conference on Democratic Decentralization, held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. The conference was organized by the Kerala State Planning Board as part of an attempt to evaluate the experience of four years of the People's Campaign for the Ninth Plan, Kerala's extensive experiment in local democracy and decentralized planning as mechanisms for development. The large number and range of participants made the conference much more than a local evaluation, as India-wide and international comparisons were supplemented by extensive theoretical discussions, particularly in the academic portion of the conference. While most participants came from Kerala, several attended from other Indian states and more than thirty foreign participants came from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, Sri Lanka, England, and Sweden. The Cuban and Vietnamese ambassadors to India attended the entire conference and made comments about their nations' decentralization policies at the final plenary session.     

Biting the Fishhook

Abstract

For a long time after his abdication from the throne in 1955 and his subsequent rise to power as Chief of State, Norodom Sihanouk's main problem in governing Cambodia was how to deflect political breezes from the sails of the internal leftist-Communist opposition. In the last year and a half, that problem changed to one of how to upstage his political rivals on the right. His defeat in the latter enterprise signals the demise of peace in the only Indochinese nation successful in the last fifteen years in preventing war and strife from sweeping across its borders.     

The Four Faces of Bandung: Detainees,Soldiers, Revolutionaries and Statesmen

This article seeks to provide a textured and nuanced conception of the first Asian-African Conference (18-24 April 1955) by structuring four simultaneous, “mosaic” perspectives (for India, China, Indonesia and the Philippines) of that multifaceted event. By eschewing hegemonic “Cold War” and “triumphalist” interpretations, one purposefully avoids a rehash of the roles of the USA and the Soviet Union. Their role, in this study, is peripheral. This article highlights the complexity of the conference by a series of analytical snap shots, multiple focuses, recollections and memories, which emphasise the frequently neglected Babel-like environment of the Bandung Conference. The resulting analysis provides capsules of self-contained experiences rather than one unifying story. Ultimately, the highly contentious and disparate viewpoints that the participants brought to the conference underscored the difficulties that Cold War superpowers experienced in creating political-military blocs friendly to their cause. Third World countries, by the nature of their decolonization process and their political expediencies, succeeded in preventing both the superpowers from creating monolithic blocs.     

Third Worldist relativism: A new form of imperialism

This article challenges relativist and Third Worldist ideas which continue to influence the Left. It is argued that while the Left should remain critical of western domination of the global political economy, this should not be confused with the assumption that anti-western positions in the “Third World” are always and necessarily progressive. This is illustrated by a discussion of recent western interventions in the Third World. It is argued that a “Third Worldist” approach is based on a spurious relativism which has recently enjoyed a revival through the rise of post-modern social theory. In rejecting these approaches the case is made for a restatement of a genuine universalism and internationalism, which is equally critical of western imperialism and conflicts with the “Third World.”     

New letters from Hiroshima

Abstract

Wartime censors, as Phillip Knightley's The First Casualty reminds us, perform a twofold mission: (l) deny vital data to the enemy and (2) conceal from the citizenry potentially perturbing news as to how their leaders are conducting the mayhem at the front. This protective zeal tends to be habit forming and can outlast formal hostilities. Take the case of two historians who tried to pry past the “received wisdom and the received ignorance” about Western military activities in a gory conflict fought on Third World terrain: A tyrant launched a lightning invasion into a neighboring southern country over which he claimed historical sovereignty. A U.S. diplomat earlier had “signaled” the avaricious dictator that the target state lay outside the perimeter of vital U.S. interests. Nonetheless, seventeen U.N. countries—though primarily the United States—charged in to repel the invaders with a ferocious aerial campaign and a massive ground assault. The tyrant, alas, survived this onslaught because several hundred thousand—and eventually several million—highly motivated Chinese troops came to the rescue.     

The use of technology and leadership in enhancing strategic cooperative policing within the SADC region

ABSTRACT

The globalisation processes driving development and the transnational nature of crime require the collaboration of police within regions using sophisticated technology to combat crime. This article examines the role of technology and leadership in enhancing cooperative policing. Following a successful safety strategy during the 2010 Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) Soccer World Cup (SWC) tournament in South Africa, the aim of the article is to demonstrate how technology and strategic leadership contributed to the success of this event. The research conducted consisted of an extensive review of existing research publications on the state of policing in southern Africa; and a conference presentation by Lieutenant-General Pruis about policing the SWC from which key policing lessons have been extracted. The literature survey revealed the challenges of police forces and policing in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as being primarily resource constraints, and socio-political environments that are not always conducive to effective policing. Conclusions drawn are that some of the lessons from the SWC, such as planning, budgeting, strategic leadership, regional and international cooperation of security personnel, community involvement, an informed media strategy and the use of technology to support these processes, can be replicated in regional policing operations.     

ICHRPI/CIHAE newsletter

ABSTRACT

When the Assemblée Nationale Constituante (ANC) adopted the first French constitution, delegates composed 11 articles whose purpose was to guide and govern the behaviour of members in a future legislative assembly. Procedures in three of these articles required that a bill receive three readings during its progress through the assembly. Beginning with works of René Descartes (1637) and Galileo Galilei (1638), I located sources for procedures that guide and govern the work of law-makers, applying their reasoning to the process of legislation. I explain how investigators went about identifying variables that captured conditions of possible experience. Narrowing my focus to three articles in the 1791 constitution, I extracted variables pertinent to the three readings of a bill, along with the permissible range of values that the text of these articles assigned to each variable. An Excel 3D Surface chart presents procedural choices which were available to French delegates to the Assemblée Nationale Constituante, the body responsible for drafting the 1791 constitution. The Excel chart is based on arrays of variables and the values assigned from the text of these three articles; these are located in Section II Tenue des Séances et Forme de Délibérer / Conduct of Meetings and Form of Deliberation’.     

Why the World Bank can't lead us to a just world order

Abstract

Gail Omvedt makes some telling points in her critique. Dependency theorists have been too quick to discount the possibility of capitalist development in the Third World. It is good to be reminded of the dangers of allowing wishful thinking to color our assessments of popular struggles, and it is useful to have our attention drawn to how elites often use populist rhetoric to mask their defense of power and privilege. In a number of respects, however, I find Omvedt's analysis flawed and even troubling.     

Seeds of revolution

Abstract

The most significant technological innovation of the postwar period, from the point of view of the Third World, has been the development of new, high-yield hybrids of food grains such as wheat, corn and rice, which are especially well adapted to tropical climatic patterns. The development and spread of the use of these seeds and their associated agricultural technologies is of such recent date and as yet so incomplete that the above statement may seem premature. Nevertheless, the experience of the last four years and the prospects for the future, as well summarized in Mr. Brown's book. suggest that the rubric “The Green Revolution” may be much more than another typically American confusion of the terms “revolution” and innovation.     

The Philippines: Another Vietnam?

Abstract

The historic relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines today gives an exceptional importance to the massive economic and strategic legacy of over 70 years of American domination of that nation. Apart from its prime significance to the future of American military power in Asia after the Indochina debacle, the Philippines is the most important example of a sustained U.S. effort to transform a Third World country in its own image. Now, with a martial-law regime's fate very much in doubt and the U.S.'s economic investments and military bases all hanging in the balance, the objective pressures for a potentially open-ended American commitment to preserve its interests and credibility in yet one more Asian nation are again re-emerging in a form substantially more compulsive than those in Indochina before 1965.     

Stanford chapter

Abstract

The Concerned Asian Scholars at Stanford was organized in March of this years around a nucleus of about fifteen graduate students. Membership has reached about 25 with two or three professors and some undergraduates. Among the activities to be carried on are the following: establishment of new local chapters at those campuses on the West coast which have yet to be organized and plans for the National Conference (both to be done in conjunction with Berkeley); efforts to establish good channels of mass communication in this area and study projects on the ABM and Asia, the history of Asian Studies in America, institutionalized racism in Asian studies and textbooks and teaching materials on Asia in California public schools. Also under consideration are proposals for a photo exhibit on the people of Vietnam with a documentary film. One of the first actions of our CCAS group was to come out publicly in support of the April Third Coalition and its sit-in at the Stanford Applied Electronics Laboratory which seeks to stop all CBW research, counterinsurgency work, war-related scholarship and all classified research on this campus and at the Stanford Research Institute. Many members of the group were active participants in the nine day liberation of the AEL.     

Berkeley

Abstract

CCAS now has a membership of about 65 here at Berkeley. We struggle on meeting in between National Guard search and destroy operations. Franz Schurmann and David Marr went to Stockholm to talk to the NLF and the DRV people. A press conference for them was just beginning when the helicopter swept over Sproul Plaza spraying CN gas. Several nights later they held forth at a large CCAS gathering to discuss their trip and what we as “Asian Scholars” might do about a war which obviously has not ended.